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I have (possibly) a somewhat controversial theory. School is not actually as important as people think it is. It is vital in teaching kids basic numeracy and literacy and is good for social skills, but beyond that I am not so sure. The majority of our personal development; ethics/morals, personality traits etc, I think we get from parents, family and friends growing up and our main intellectual development comes from University/work career and interests pursued in our own capacity.
Not saying school is not important, it provides the foundation, but the focus on exam scores, OFSTED ratings etc. as to what makes a good school is kind of pointless. As long as a school is safe, encourages kids to be respectful and teaches you to read and write and be able to think for yourself, it is doing its job.
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It's not as if you can really choose a school anyway (unless going private). The best you can do is request one and hope you're given a place. They can then often vary considerably in the time your kids are attending, this happened with the primary and secondary schools my two went to. Both had excellent reputations but the primary school head retired not long after my younger daughter started and it fell apart when they appointed a new head that was supposedly managing two schools - she 'worked' from home and rarely turned up for any events which were left to the deputy. The comprehensive was gradually detriorating both educationally and in terms of the buildings with leaking classrooms and poor facilities whilst the Council rebuilt a few of the other schools in less affluent parts of their area. There wasn't really an option for them to go anywhere else unless we opted for the Catholic school about 5 or 6 miles the other side of town.
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Not arguing with your main point but "encourages kids to be respectful" is another thing that should be done at home. I see children totally disrespecting their parents, nobody will get respect from them.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
I think schools can be more influential than just teaching kids to read and write and keeping them safe. Things like setting aspirations, internalised beliefs about yourself and so on are all bound to be affected by the place you spend huge amounts of your childhood. Even getting into university - if you compare many London schools with schools in the East Midlands the affect well funded schools have on your achievement levels is stark.
[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]0 -
There are 6 secondary schools within a couple of miles of us. Putting them in the preferred order on the form definitely makes a difference. We got our second choice, but it turned out that we were wrong and it's a perfect fit.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I dunno.
I got the shit kicked out of me pretty much every day (think punching, kicking, occasionally stubbing fags out on me) for most of secondary school and when I see a counsellor they seem to think that has had a huge impact on my life. I'd suggest the school having a culture of not tolerating bullying (rather than just saying they don't) would probably have had avoided said impact. AFAIK, this is not necessarily a given in a school.
And I do genuinely think grades open doors for you. There are obviously people who make a success of life without them, but it is a hell of a lot easier if you do well at school - and some schools are better at doing that than others.
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Where we live there is a choice of an 'outstanding' girls school one town over (we're on the edge of the catchment), 'outstanding' catholic school in our village (we're not catholic) or a 'good' school in another adjacent town.
I have 2 girls and we live at the right end of the village for the girls school so they will go there.
If we had boys or lived a mile further from the girls school, the only choice would be if we were willing to pretend to be catholic.
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Completely agree with this. When looking at primary schools we went to visit the three withing our area. Dismissed the one classed as 'Excellent' as they were far too full of themselves. Some neighbours offered sympathy our son didn't get in and were aghast when we said we hadn't even applied. Another we ruled out after the visit as they didn't seem interested in the kids. The one we chose was deemed 'Poor' by Ofsted, but the visit went well and they seemed to give a monkeys. Funnily enough the first went downhill and the one we chose was soon deemed 'Excellent'. By the time of secondary school we were a lot better armed with information and Ofsted meant nothing to us.
The ratings were a ridiculous oversimplification.
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Unfortunately some kids will never get that from their parents
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Yup! I blame the parents. It all begins at home.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
I am sorry you went through that. I have no doubt the trauma of bullying is carried through life. That is more what I was referring to about a culture of respect and safeguarding in schools. If you are going to insist kids spend their formative years in school, we need to ensure schools do everything they can to protect pupils.
I would agree that qualifications help early career to get you started, but once you have job experience under your belt, I suspect it becomes less and less relevant for most people.
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sure, bullying etc is exactly the kind of thing ofsted is there for.
Id also say you’re entrusting your children with a bunch of grown ups - it’s good they’re monitored.
(if it gives you any idea into my psyche the teachers blamed me for being bullied and told me not to make myself a target as the principal solution to the problem)
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Monitored, sure.
Thinking that you can sum up the effectiveness of a school's anti -bullying policy and crucially its implementation in a one word 4-point scale? No.
If they just credited us with a more than 2-second attention span and published the reports without the meaningless score, that would still be an improvement.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
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I'm not sure where you're getting that 'involving parents' bit from. I haven't seen that in any of the reports.
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Don't most people just read the reports?
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There's been a fair bit of discussion in the media to coincide with the start of the new academic year about the impact of the Covid lockdowns on the behaviour of children. I think the first cohort of "lockdown babies" will be starting school this year. General conclusion is that lockdown did behavioural standards no favours, so this may be driving recent falling standards in behaviour amongst the current infant school kids, who were babies/toddlers during the first lockdowns.
The most compelling theory to explain this was that with busy parents and higher than normal chaos levels at home, very young kids got used to being able to get what they wanted by grunting and pointing, whereas in normal times, parents have the time to insist that higher standards of communication are used, or simply say to the child how to ask for something properly so they start learning this, even if more basic levels do the job with very young kids.
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I think that is quite a negative take. These kids got loads and loads of time with their parents and will probably do very well at school. I feel sorry for the kids that missed large chunks of school.
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Yes there is no way my latest will ever see me as much as my first did.
I think the work flexibility that Covid unlocked has been a huge help to families.
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Key point I referenced was that a lot of parents were too busy during lockdown, due to needing to work and also do basic childcare (ie keep kids safe, fed, clothed etc, rather than one-on-one stuff to benefit development). I don't think anyone has ever pushed fulltime WFH combined with stay-at-home parenting as an option to consider for benefits to children.
That said, the impact of lockdowns may be being overstated for some group's benefit. e.g. there are claims that some of the recent GCSE cohort was 2 years behind where it would have been without Covid restrictions, which feels a little hard to justify.
I guess we all have our pre-conceived notions on this subject!
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WFH etc. is great now, but practical issues were what they were during lockdown. If kids have missed out on key development stages than it's very hard to make that up.
As an example, my youngest's school year (1/9/03 - 31/8/04 births) had their first experience of public exams when they sat their A levels. They got GCSEs via teachers' grades and missed out on about 25 chances for "exam practice". Thankfully my daughter inherited her Mother's brains and sailed through, but there were some who apparently struggled quite a bit with the pressure of a real life exam. (Very different from mocks.) And obviously some of these didn't get the grades they wanted, which will have an impact in their later life.
Re different levels of attention that #2 will get vs #1, my aforementioned youngest does have a track record of "making things happen" (and not always in a good way!) She's close in age to her older sis, and was left to her own devices more than we'd have liked when she was young, so she developed a few tactics for re-involving herself in family activities!
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All sounding eerily familiar.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
If we're on parenting, I'd like to make a plea to parents to not make the first day-back at school about them.
Keep your tears and wails about missing them etc for when you've gone home - they're nervous enough as it is, no need to make it worse. It's just school.
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Re "if we're on parenting" this is the Dadsnet thread, so by definition we are on parenting!
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The nurseries were all largely open and unaffected by covid after the initial lockdown, so they still got to go there. The kids you are talking about were being born during the initial lockdown, so didn't really miss much.
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The whole point of the media discussion I highlighted was that a significant number of kids did miss a lot. Or at least that's what's claimed.
But per my comment above, we've all got our pre-conceived ideas on this subject so there's probably no point discussing things further.
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My wife had two young kids at home and was supposed to homeschool both of them (three years apart in age so completely different syllabus) and also work 3 days a week. The kids spent a lot more time with their mum but the idea that would somehow be a benefit academically is clearly nonsense.
Also, I'm amazed that my wife managed it without going completely mad.
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